The Phantom of the Opera Essay Questions

The novel features a love triangle between Christine and two men. Compare and contrast the two men who want to marry her.

Erik, a deformed genius who lives under the Opera, is a composer, an engineer, and a man who has never experienced love. Even his mother rejected him. Over the years he has found employment, but his only friend from his younger days is the Persian. He falls in love with Christine after watching her sing in the opera chorus. Recognizing her potential as a vocalist, he singles her out for voice lessons. He pretends to be the "angel of music" her father once spoke of. With Erik's assistance, Christine's career starts to take off. However, in the process, Erik falls possessively and obsessively in love with her. In many ways she reminds him of his mother. By earning her love, in a way he is trying to make up for a kind of emotional attachment he didn't get as a child.

Perhaps as a result of a lifetime of solitude and rejection by others, Erik has become cruel, amoral, and frequently violent. He has a sadistic streak and doesn't mind frightening or killing people. Christine's feelings for Erik are not reciprocated. She respects him, but she also fears him. She accepts his proposal and wears his ring, but agrees to marry him only under pressure.

Raoul is a wealthy young aristocrat roughly Christine's age. He and Christine met when they were children. Initially he plans to leave France and go overseas. As part of their farewell, they pretend to be engaged. Under Erik's jealous and watchful eye, the play-act becomes real and the young couple actually falls in love.

The two men have a few things in common: they both love and respect Christine; they are both connoisseurs of music; and they both have access to wealth and resources. Both of them love Christine enough to die for her, and both of them ultimately realize that they love her enough to let her go if need be.

In many respects Raoul is Erik's opposite. He is sensitive, kind, very handsome, young (Erik is much older than Christine). He is nowhere near as physically strong or as intelligent as Erik, and he lack's Erik's genius. The love he has for Christine is not as obsessive or jealous as Erik's feelings for her.

Which does Erik's character personify more: creativity or destruction? Provide examples from the text.

Possible Answer 1: Creativity.

Erik spends most of his life building things and making things: trap-doors, clever devices, and musical compositions. In the distant past, when the Persian first met him, he was employed as something between a court jester and an executioner. When he strangled people or devised different systems of torture, it was not out of personal inclination: it was out of a need to please his employer and to make a somewhat sadistic little princess laugh. This pleased Erik, as it was the closest thing to love that he had ever experienced from a human being. However, had Erik not been willing to kill, he could just as easily have been the one executed.

Although Erik does occasionally indulge in violence, he does not seek out opportunities to exercise it. He leaves people alone unless they ignore the warnings and venture too far into his territory. The pranks he plays on people at the Opera are mostly harmless. Nobody is hurt by the falling chandelier, and the only reason he kidnaps Christine is because he thinks he is going to lose her otherwise. Indeed, Raoul is the one who shoots at Erik first when he sees his eyes glowing in the dark. At Christine's request, Erik spares the lives of Raoul and the Persian. He believes himself redeemed by her expression of love after she gives him a kiss.

Possible Answer 2: Destruction

People display their true nature when they are pushed to their limits. When circumstances push Erik, he reacts violently and destructively. He has no problem with strangling people who try to follow him into the catacombs. He takes pride in his murders, recalling with pleasure the time he served a sadistic young princess and amused her by strangling people with the Punjab lasso.

Although Erik is a genius, he uses his capacity for creativity in an inherently destructive way. He builds a bomb, a variety of booby traps, and instruments of torture such as the chamber of mirrors. Nobody forces him to build these things, and he's not doing it for money or advancement. He does it solely to gratify himself. Although he, and the narrator, appear to believe that it was his ugliness and lack of maternal kindness that caused him to behave in such a morally wrong way, plenty of people are born with physical disfigurements, or lose their mothers at an early age, without engaging in what amounts to terrorism.

Christine is a very talented musician but not particularly intelligent or astute. How does Erik gain her confidence, and how does he manipulate her inappropriately? Why does Erik's ruse work as long as it does?

Erik takes advantage of the fact that Christine is an orphan. Although she has an adopted mother of sorts, her real mother died when she was a child. Her father, before he passed away, taught her that there was an Angel of Music who provided inspiration to artists. He said that he would send the Angel of Music to Christine from Heaven.

When Christine heard Erik's voice in her dressing-room, she immediately thought he was the Angel of Music. Erik played along, providing music lessons daily for about three months. In addition to his other gifts, he was an outstanding voice coach. However he also taught Christine that she should love him. He even told her to give him her soul. In this respect, he abused his authority as both an instructor and a purported angel.

Erik's pretense worked as long as it did for several reasons. First, Christine was suffering from what could only be depression: after her father died, she lost all interest in everything, including her art. She went from being one of the most promising young singers in Paris to someone who barely made it into the chorus. She was longing for some sign that her father had passed on to better things, and was predisposed to believe in the promised supernatural sign.

Erik keeps himself hidden from Christine, behind a mirror, so that she cannot see him or his mask. Since she cannot see him and only hears a voice, she is willing to believe that she's not talking to a human being but rather to a non-corporeal angel.

Why does Erik decide to reunite Christine and Raoul at the end? What are the stakes for him?

Christine was the first and only person to have allowed Erik to kiss him and not feel disgusted, or to respond in a violent, visceral manner to his affection and love. She also shared tears with him and did not attempt to shun or close him off after she married him. This surprising open attitude seems to have led Erik to a change of heart. He realizes how much Christine has sacrificed for him and to keep her away from her true love any longer might be too cruel, especially if he (Erik) really loves her. When he reunites Christine and Raoul it indicates how much – despite having hurt many people throughout his life – he experiences pain and remorse. At the end of it all, his decision points to his humanity and his ability to understand not only how far he has come to marry Christine but also how far Christine has come to save her friends (and the Opera House, and its occupants): they ended up marrying one another, but for entirely different reasons.

How does Raoul, if at all, develop as a character throughout the story?

Despite having a prominent role in the story, Raoul seems to be the most rash, impatient, and immature character – and one could say he continues to act in this way until the very end. In sum, he gets what he wants: Christine. But it is hard to pinpoint what pivotal decision Raoul makes to turn the tables in his favor. The critical decision-makers appear to be Christine, the Persian, or (ironically) Erik himself. Raoul's role is limited to that of a maddened lover who makes very quick, uninformed decisions (such as when he begins to bang on the wall of the torture chamber and screams Christine’s name). The reader does not see any major character development, and in the end he embodies the exact description that Leroux gives of him at the beginning: spoiled. He has, in effect, cried and thrashed around enough to get what he wants – but only because of Christine’s bravery.